WhatsApp previews are pickier than Facebook’s, and harder to refresh: there is no official button to clear WhatsApp’s cache. Most failures come down to the image, the tags, or a stale card. Work through this checklist in order and you will find the fault.
How WhatsApp builds a preview
WhatsApp reads the same Open Graph tags as other apps — og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url — but it reads them on the sender’s phone when the link is first shared, and then caches the result per device. It does not run JavaScript, so tags injected by scripts are invisible to it. The tags must be in the page’s static HTML, and the image must be a public, absolute URL.
Fix 1: the image
The image is the most common WhatsApp-specific failure. Use 1200 by 630 pixels at a 1.91 to 1 ratio, and keep the file under 600 KB — heavier images often drop the card to a small thumbnail or nothing. JPG or PNG only. If the image is small (under about 300 pixels on its short side), an SVG, or served without https, WhatsApp falls back to the compact thumbnail layout. If the image sits behind a login wall or a redirect WhatsApp will not follow, the card renders without an image at all. Test the raw image URL in a private browser window: if it does not load there, WhatsApp cannot load it either.
Fix 2: the tags
Confirm the page has og:title, og:description, and og:image in its static HTML — view source, not the rendered page, since JavaScript-rendered tags do not count. Keep the title short and the description to one sentence. If you control nothing about the destination page, build a share page with your own tags instead (see our custom preview guide) and share that page’s address.
Fix 3: the cache
WhatsApp caches previews aggressively — from a day or two to several weeks — with no documented expiry and no official refresh. That means fixing the page is not enough for people who already saw the old card. The reliable workaround is to change the URL slightly: append ?v=2 to the link. WhatsApp treats it as a new page and fetches fresh tags. A fresh short link works the same way, since it is a new URL too. Note that Facebook’s Sharing Debugger only partly helps: it refreshes Facebook’s cache, not WhatsApp’s per-device cache, though the two share crawling infrastructure and a re-scrape sometimes helps.
What does not work
- Clearing WhatsApp’s app cache. That only clears your own device. Everyone else keeps the old card.
- Deleting and re-sending the same link. The preview is baked into the message; re-sending uses the same cached card.
- Waiting a few minutes. Plan for at least 24 to 48 hours, often longer.
A note on groups, channels, and business accounts
The same rules apply in groups and channels, with one extra wrinkle: every member’s phone caches the card independently. Fixing the page does not fix the card on a phone that already saw the old one. For a channel announcement, post the corrected link as a fresh message with the ?v=2 address rather than editing the old message — edited messages keep their original baked-in preview. Business accounts get no special refresh power either; the per-device cache treats every sender the same.
Checklist before you share widely
- Tags present in static HTML: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url.
- Image 1200 by 630, under 600 KB, JPG or PNG, public https URL.
- Test the card once in a fresh chat before broadcasting it.
- If you update the image later, version its filename or append ?v=2 to the shared link.
- Preview the card first with the generator below — mock cards for Facebook, X, and WhatsApp side by side. The mocks are approximations, not WhatsApp’s real renderer, but they catch the common faults before your contacts do.